The form (visible below) will hopefully encourage more active and detailed reporting of Mapspam to Google. In removing the postings from the public domain, though, it may also make it harder to bring the critical transparency to Google Maps that it obviously needs.

Please consider leaving a comment as your input will help me (& everyone else) better understand and learn about local.

I am so happy to see that Maps has added the ability to report spam privately. Some of the public reports have been open invitations for the spammers to pay back reportees with less-then-lovely ‘user reviews’.

Do wish the ‘describe why this listing is considered spam’ box was larger and that the report offered a way to easily identify multiple instances of abuse from the same spammer. Some of these examples run into the hundreds or thousands.

Well if Google has fixed the problem someone should probably tell 24x7locallocksmith.com which you pointed to as one of the hijackers in an earlier post.

Today I was researching locksmith listings for a post about how certain locksmith companies are capturing multiple top local spots in less than scrupulous ways and ran across 24×7 and they’ve simply moved on to hijack another hotel. This time it’s not 800 reviews it’s only 65 but guess where they’re sitting in Google Maps. You can see the screen shot on my post: http://www.dewpointproductions.com/seo_blog/local-search/locksmiths-crack-google-local/

One of the questions to be asked here is why the domain wasn’t removed from the Google index?

When Maps Guide Jen says fixed, what she means to say is that the security hole that was breached has been secured. Not that they went back and removed the many entries that got in that way.

One of the questions to be asked here is why the domain wasn’t removed from the Google index?

Good question. Their method is to remove the high profile, reported spam while leaving most of the listings in the index. If a problem is pervasive enough then they might rejigger their results to minimize the visibility or success of these spammy listings at some later date.

I am with you. When there is a leak in the toilet pipe, you don’t just fix the pipe you clean up the raw sewage that was spilled. Otherwise your domicile will smell like s%*t.